The Super Official Homeowners Thread

[Steve85]

The first little repair in the new home was a toilet tank valve and it looked like this, caked in hard water residue.


We were certainly past due on installing the softener. This hardness will kill our appliances in short order. Off to Lowes where Whirlpool 33K grain softener was 10% off. Got the softener, a few valves, some pipe, fittings, a primer/glue combo pack and 160# of salt. I later went back for a whole house filter...the plumbing version of "while I'm in there".



It was also the first test of home improvement shopping with a wagon instead of SUV and it all fit just fine!

This is the area I had for install right at the water service, I'm glad it was very accessible.





The softener and the whole house filter both come with bypass valves built into their plumbing inlet/outlet but I wanted to be able to completely bypss both so I went with a three valve set up. This also allowed me to get the valves in, turn the water back on to the house (no pressure to finish should something major get in the way) and work with dry plumbing for the units. Same for if something happens in the future, I can bypass with turning a few valves and fix the offending unit as needed.

This was my first time doing plastic pressure plumbing, have always done copper but figured it was just like small waste and vent plumbing, instead of 1.5 to 3" pipes, it's .5 to 1.0 piping. I was worried getting the valve setup inline without using a slip coupling but thankfully there was enough give in the main line to get it in no problem. Well, even though I had the water off and all faucets open for a while to drain, still had a nice spray once I cut through the main! 

Low and out of the picture is the main service valve, the way this setup works is with blue valves closed and red open, the softener and filter are completely bypassed, no pressure to any of the plumbing or the units. Red off and blue on, all water goes through the units for them to do their magic.



I went to work making and putting together the puzzle pieces which is the fun part of the job. I wanted to have room behind to service the units but also needed to be able to support the plumbing to prevent vibration and damage.

Did a dry test fit of all the pieces. The flow is out of the blue valve (middle of picture), 90 down into the filter (shorter unit), up and out of the filter over to the softener, then up behind gas plumbing, 45 out and 90 back in to the top blue valve. I should have rotated the blue valves 90 degrees to make them a bit easier to get at but no biggie. The two half inch pipes coming off the main with the brass valves are the outside faucet lines. I was tempted to put the front one on the system so washing the cars gets the filtered and soft water but decided against it for now. I can always tie it in at top where the main line 45s out from behind the gas lines.


It was time time to huff primer and glue. There was more slop in the dry fit than I anticipated and had a re-cut one of the pieces but overall it went smashingly well.



And done, ready for strapping and bracing! (or so I thought...)



Following the startup procedures they have you bypass the units at their inlet/outlet valves and pressurize to check the plumbing. All was good at first, then the pressure built and BAM, a fitting popped off and it was like a damn fire hose in the basement.



That's the section I had cut a new piece for and never glued it...oops. Glued it and went up for dinner to let it dry. Came down and put the pressure to everything again and checked for leaks, which is always fun when everything is already wet   . I did the start up procedures and definitely under estimated the need to strap down the discharge hose. The filter rinse blew out of the drain and it was like another fire hose, though more like May's Grand Tour fire truck and less like a real one.

1 day in and so far so good! Water is starting to fell better. It takes a while to work through the system since the hot water tank is full of hard water and I wasn't about to drain it just to get soft water faster. Also, plastic pipe is so much easier to work with than copper.